Title: What You Need To Know About Tort Reform in Georgia
Downloaded: 2025-12-30 08:58:20

[Music] welcome back everybody to the auto aent and attorney's podcast today I have the pleasure of having Brian Craig of wood Craig Miller and Rob hammers of the Hammers law firm with us today these are both prestigious Atlanta firms that have helped co-counsel a lot of our clients in the past and will continue to do so Rob Brian thank you so much for coming today thank you for uh having us I'm excited to talk to you today I'm so excited to hear that the topic now that Tor reform is all but past is to recap what tort reform was purported to be what it will actually be or what you pontificate that it will be and how it's going to affect the average Georgia Consumer because it was sold to us as a consumer protection legislation so I'd like to put on record what we should be able to anticipate in the next year two years five years I think if it actually benefited the consumer then um that that's a good thing for Georgia drivers in theory but uh obviously we got to see how this all plays out but my best guess is that consumers are are not going to benefit and it's just going to make claims all that much harder uh and have some significant uh limitations to them now so you mentioned it's all but past and and I want to say that it's you know March 7th right and we're about one day after what we call Crossover at the capital which means if you didn't have a bill pass out of the Senate it can't go to the house and if you didn't have a bill pass out of the house it can't go to the Senate um and so your bill dead this bill s sp68 um which is the Omnibus tort Reform Bill passed out of the Senate a few weeks ago and has been in the house so it doesn't have to go back up now to be made law but it does have to be voted on it's currently in what's called a rules committee meaning they didn't put it into a study committee where there's public hearings and people get to come in and testify and tell you how they think it's going to help or not help and that you have an equal debate on both sides um it was moved to rules which is just is there anything wrong functionally with the bill that needs to be addressed before it goes to the members for a vote and the speaker of the house um speaker Burns decided that he would put it into subcommittee in rules so that there could be at least some hearings where the sponsor of the bill uh um uh John Kennedy from mon who's an insurance defense lawyer who who uh authored the bill he came in and he presented and they got to Pepper him with questions for several day uh a full legislative day and based on his responses the the speaker said let's go ahead and appoint from this special sub committee an opportunity to hear from the other side so they had insurance people come in defense lawyers come in and plainist lawyers and plain's clients and so on the 6th well I guess the 5ifth two days ago um there was a all day hearing at the um at the House of Representatives subcommittee for um this 68 and we got to pitch our side one more time so now where we are is have we motivated the subcommittee to recommend any amendments to sp68 before it goes to the house to vote and if we can get some amendments we can improve the impact of this bill on the consumers of Georgia if not and the bill goes to the floor as is um it will be voted on and that's our last chance and so what we want to make sure that you're your listeners here and understand is if this is released and the vote happens it's going to the governor for Signature if it hasn't been voted on yet you still have time to call your House of Representatives representative at the Georgia legislature and say don't do this it's bad for us it's bad for Georgians let's make them fix this bill and vote no um and so where we are at this current date is what they do is called a whip which means count the votes how many Republicans and how many Democrats are going to vote with the bill and against the bill and if we have enough votes to beat the bill in the house it won't pass and it won't become law however if you do defeat the bill and a whip in the house it can be brought back for a second vote after it goes back to committee so it doesn't mean it's dead dead we got to get through uh the legislative session which is called siny die the the last day right and if we get to SNY die nothing has been passed Governor can't sign it so our last Bastion of defense is beating it on a what we call Floor fight if that happens awesome there is no tform if we lose I just got a politics lesson yeah I was gonna say Rob is as smart as you are handsome oh God that means we're both terrible yeah that's not a good that's not a that's horrible that's who wants to hear that yo but let me ask you this Rob is do you know is there anything specifically in the bill that says that there will be savings passed on to the consumer absolutely not and so like how is that not an issue that was like how were they able to circumvent that that's that's my question money then how does that not get more public I know that I'm I'm asking you almost a rhetorical question but why one insurance companies are publicly traded companies anyone can look up their financials and see what the shareholder earnings are how the stock prices are all in the green and they continue to rise it's public knowledge what each of these state representatives have received from the insurance industry in terms of doar why do you think what's going on how can an entity like this get away these lobbyists get away with convincing the majority of Georgia Citizens that this is actually consumer protection there's always been like that kind of personal injury stigma I think in this it's been fueled historically by the insurance lobbyist and uh you know it personal injury is a bad thing until you need it and there's a lot of people that are significantly injured that are going to be put in way worse positions because now there's just all these roadblocks that are going to be thrown up that didn't exist before and and really shouldn't exist because they're again like Rob just said the benefit you know consumer protection isn't even addressed and so it's like this is just another that you know the big bad Mighty Insurance uh committee is able to to to P push their weight around I would say this is not a public interest issue right like the word tort reform isn't even something that your average citizen who hasn't had something awful happen to their family and needed to make a claim ever experiences good point right and so if we as trial lawyers who are trying to build public uh opposition to this issue are speaking into a universe in which there's Elon Musk bought Twitter and named it X and is ba basically live streaming his thoughts all day and you have Donald Trump that's you know on TV talking about National issues that everyone is all in a tither about get an ordinary Georgia to think about whether or not the price of their auto insurance or business owners their cost of their commercial liability insurance ordinary people just don't care right and how did that end up as like like the main agenda on on our Governor's hit list I mean that cuz I I'm with you I don't think that that's something that I put that on the uh priority list about as high as the Gulf of America right I I think to your point that's that's the Crux of it right because this isn't a public interest issue it's not going to draw the needle of a political back backlash Governor km has one more full year in office before his political career is effectively over if he doesn't do something National right he's been very popular in this state and his decision on how to handle Co bought him a lot of political capital and him backing up his state representatives and his State appointees during the 20120 election when Trump lost Georgia and lost the election bought him no love from the president and so Kent is in a spot where he's not going to get any love from the Trump Administration when his career is over and he's in a spot in which there's nowhere else for him to do in Georgia politics so what's he going to do is he going to go fishing or is he going to do something else he does have a a lot of political popularity but he needs a lot of money and if there's a lot of money to be had insurance is where you're going to go and the Chamber of Commerce which is on the national and local level that has the interest of business medical hospitals big business logging Trucking uh Pharmaceuticals you name it it's not just Insurance these people don't want us to pop them when they behave badly and it the best way that people who want to speak truth to power have still in our society is to swell people sit in the box and say you did wrong and you got to pay what it cost and that's what keeps people honest it's why we have seat belts it's why we have airbags it's why we have crash avoidance technology it's why we have rear Collision controls every advance in technology we have in safety comes from trial lawyers and not from magnanimous corporations and people don't know that unless they get on the wrong end of a negligent Act and so what we have here is Governor km's been great to trial lawyers for seven and A2 years but we're useless to them on a national stage and so now he wants to do something and he doesn't have the president so what's he going to do he's going to go to who's going to pay for his campaign and he's looking at Senator oof and he's looking at the United States Senate and he says how am I going to get there he's going to get there through the money he can raise and they said that money is unlimited if you stop people in Georgia from kicking our ass in court and so we did it and that's where we're at that is such an intelligent take and it makes so much sense but what I'm wondering is is it a moment in time where this industry was ripe for it or is it so to speak loow hanging fruit because of who who trial lawyers are do we shoot ourselves in the foot with attorney advertising for example which I always considered access to Justice what you were talking about that only trial lawyers can hold these corporations accountable it's the only portion of law where every citizen has access to Justice they don't have to write a retainer check to get a brilliant mind like either of you to go and step into Rob I'm I'm really good at working really hard and making no money so so to to answer the question is if you look at this bill it doesn't Target the um race to the bottom jingle folks right the the people who are trying to to Advantage themselves on the very highly condensed population of metro Atlanta where there's more auto accidents because of the the nature of the of the population and the configuration of our rways this bill doesn't Target those cases it's specifically targeted at Big verdicts mhm they're tired of us kicking their ass and the crybaby John Kennedy senator from mon who did this bill can't beat us in court so he's asking for a legislative get out of jail free card but what's going to be sad for him is that even when he gets these rules if he gets him through we're still going to kick his ass because our causes are right and our arguments are better and he can cry all he wants we're going to win the cases again and he'll be back looking for tort reform in 5 years cuz he just isn't very good at his job I I don't know about you guys but I don't know many big verdicts that weren't Justified I mean big verdicts are a product of a significant uh you know injury or I mean they're Justified most likely if the insurance company is uh caught flat footed on that it's because they didn't do right in the first place so everybody gives the insurance company an opportunity to do the right thing it's just the insurance company you know they they say that they're good neighbors and uh you know they're in good hands but that that's just not the reality so uh but I I you know I've tried a bunch of cases Rob I know you've tried a bunch of cases have you ever gotten a big verdict from an insignificant case no yeah it doesn't happen that's the wildest thing is the the premise of the entire setup when they're when they're bringing out these outlier nuclear verdict cases they they don't actually review the facts or present the facts as as how it was I remember one that I actually came up on the text thre uh I'm going to butcher the fact pattern but it it was uh presented to uh the committee as if the insurance company had offered $25 million and plaintiff said no and they got 25 million where it was actually in inverse right the the plaintiffs were ready to settle a two and a half an insurance company told them to go kick rocks and they went to to court and they got they got hit and I think that that if you take that threat of that nuclear verdict away it it takes away any leverage whatsoever to negotiate insurance companies don't want to pay to begin with yeah I mean using that example specifically it's like they still didn't do the right thing it took a jury to say what it was right they had an opportunity to sell far less than $25 million there wouldn't have been a nuclear ver verdict there would have been probably a fair settlement but the jury thought it was worth way more than even the plff lawyers did the way I'm thinking about this right now Rob do you think it's correct like if I what I just said that Tor reform is going to take the ability of attorney plaintiff's trial lawyers to not get those nuclear verdicts is that something that's going to happen so just for context H Georgia is a a dixiecrat state we were democrats for a hundred years mostly because Abraham Lincoln was a republican right and so even though the politics might have been conservative our politicians were Democrats and um that changed around 2000 right and for the first time in over 100 years the House of Representatives and the governor and the and the Senate were Republicans in 2005 and they were going to get even and they passed s sp3 which was the first time we had massive sweeping T Tor reform in Georgia and that was the offer of settlement statute it was caps on Damages it was a porman of fall the were these vehicles that were supposed to uh constrain verdicts and to improve the lives and fair of the judicial system all these little buzzwords they use to say we're going to save insurance companies money and we're not going to get beat in court anymore for our wrongdoing it all passed and the Caps was devastating but they were unconstitutional so those got kicked and then since then the offer of settlement statute and the apportionment has been more of a boon for plainist lawyers who knew how to use them than the defense bar who asked for them that's probably going to be the exact same outcome here they've asked for a whole bunch of stuff that they think will help them win cases but what they can't change is you did wrong we proved it and then you lied about it and you tried to hide the evidence to prev prevent us from getting a fair result for our client then the jury hears it and what's the jury going to do they're going to pop you punish yeah for sure they're going to pop you every time that ain't going to change and then and that's what they hate but they'll keep on trying to find ways to to stack the deck and and the worst part of the stack in the deck from this bill is they've asked for mandatory bation on the motion of any party which in short simple terms is if you file a lawsuit you got to prove somebody's at fault and you got hurt as a result right what they want to do is first you got to prove they're fault and then you got to prove that you were hurt and then if they did something wrong and you want punitive damages you got to have a third phase of trial now already we have in our system if that's punitive damages you got to proove your whole case first and then if you win the jury decides whether or not they believe the conduct was egregious enough to go to the punitive phase so so what they want to do is add one more layer and what's crazy about that is 90% of the cases that get filed are simple negligence automobile accidents where the defendant was cited with a ticket and there's no dispute as to who's at fault and it means a jury trial on a car wreck take a day to two days right and you can dispense Justice and a court can manage their docket now all you got to say is you got to prove that I I was at fault and now a simple carreck case will take a judge a whole week to try on something that should take two days and it's a waste of everybody's time and the only reason they want that is because on big cases they want to keep it all about the conduct before you hear any evidence about how they're paralyzed or how they're dead or anything that's really really egregious in the D so so you know uh in my cases uh the auto ones uh often times they stipulate to liability you think that that still will happen or you think that that's something that's going the way of the Buffalo well I think what's going to happen is the judge is going to be really really really tur with folks who play this system where if you got a if you got a rear end collision and you got cited for a ticket and you ask for bifurcation you don't have a judge that's going to Grant anything you want so I think that I mean if I'm on a jury forget what the I mean not forget what the judge does but if I'm on the jury and I got to like hear that the plaintive is having to prove something in which the defendant was cited and it's clear-cut rear end collision and they're fighting me on that by the time we get to the the next phase I'm I'm killing them I think that if if you're practical on the defense side I think nothing changes right um but what we've asked for as a simple fix this is how reasonable we're being down at the legislature trying to get this bill into somewhere where it's not un un unreasonable and that is let the judge decide upon motion of either party the judge May bifurcate the trial not shall just may and those words are important in the statute if the judge has the discretion and it's a product liability law and you're saying that the uh airbags didn't deploy in your car or the roof crushed in your car let's determine whether or not Ford or GM should have known that that problem with the vehicle was a problem that they did something about before this plff got injured before we talk about their injuries okay the judge might say yes to that right um but when you put shall do it it means unscrupulous or um or opportunistic defense lawyers will use this opportunity to prolong trials stretch out cases and prevent trial dates so that they can make trials last longer and it harder for plaintiff to get makes it just make it unduly burdensome mhm let's pretend that that happens that GTLA can't get the word shall to May what do you think the Practical effect on cost of litigation would be I think for those big cases I mean you know the the complex cases it goes up exponentially but the reality is also I mean they're fighting that phase anyway I mean that so I don't know you know not to dance around the question but if uh Florida was talking about like how uh they got hit with the all this tort reform stuff and how devastating it was going to be and I don't you know I don't practice law in Florida but I haven't seen any personal injury attorneys running out of the state and I think that it's just to me it's a it's going to have to be a wait and see thing because the cases don't change what we have to do changes but you know I think that the example you gave about like the the offer of settlement statutes and the I mean we didn't really know how that was going to affect the cases until we saw how it affected the cases and I think that that's kind of where we're at um I can't really see any defense attorney changing his strategy on a on a clear-cut liability case and and to Brian's Point look I mean if you're doing motor vehicle accident cases right they ain't paying those lawyers that's defending these things the kind of money it takes to work up a really big trial so they may not even get permission they might be like you you can have whatever strategy you want but you get three grand to do it go go go do you you know and that'll curtel the behavior so to your point and I think actually had a conversation with a lawyer down in Florida about Tor reform and he said that exact same thing he goes look it's been two years everyone was all histrionic about it and ring their hands and Nash their teeth and nothing's really materially changed from the actual recoveries that we're getting and the uh the justice that we're able to obtain for our CLI C so you know we we take that same um philosophy here because we're not going to stop representing injured people but what I will say is we don't need it it does no good it's just more uh stacking the Deb BS yeah that's it that's it it's BS and and again I you know hope that nobody from the insurance company come get and get me but but if it was if there was if it was for the intended purpose of consumer protection lowering your rates that would be mentioned in the bill somewhere we were so uh nabila Islam is a senator from gwet and she actually put an amendment to SP sp68 on the floor before it was voted on to go to the to the house that said we just need the insurance companies in the statute to be capped they can only float rates to a um inflation based um uh uh rate increase and that amendment was voted out shot Kel Su yeah and the vote was 33 to 20 uh 4 26 I me so they barely won and it was partisan that's like the most that's like the most common sense thing like let's let's ensure that the benefit the intended benefit is actually going to reach the intended tar like the beneficiary yeah the beneficiary and if you're watching the news you'll see that the the new speaker of the house in Florida has called to task because it's become apparent that the insurance companies were using their uh manipulations of their profits and loss statements to hide revenues and uh information on claims to sell this big verdicts are impacting rates and then after the fact they filtered that money through they've done great and that nothing's materially changed and rates aren't really changing and so now the house is going back and saying let's re-evaluate whether or not this tort Reform Bill did what it was going to do and should we make some fixes that fix holes I've got my my law school roommate and best bud I went to Florida State he's down that's okay hey you know I went to George's an underground let's all be nice here um but I he he he's down in South Florida and he does personal injury protection so if you're a chiropractor or a radiologist or whatever um and there's an automobile accident $10,000 off the top is no fault to pay doctors for care right but if the if the facility submits the bill to the insurance company the the auto insurance company to pay those bills and they discount the bill based on the CPT code and they do so outside of the parameters of their rules you can sue them for attorney's fees for not paying the full Bill wait this is in Florida yeah it's called pip yeah yeah I know pip yeah and so he's been doing pip litigation for is it under the guys of uh like a non-medical professional making like medical decisions is that what it is no it's just simply I'm I'm a radiologist and I charge $1,500 for an MRI I submit my bill for reimbursement to Geico and they say this wasn't medically authorized so we're only going to pay you $300 on it so the that that $1,200 uh Delta is at play they can hire a third- party attorney to sue guy for not paying their bill the radiologist company right okay right so the so the client of these lawyers the client of these lawyers is the facility seeking to be paid from the auto pip insurance but what what's what's the cause of action there why a breach a contract I see okay under the personal injury protection statute okay the Radiologists have standing to bring suit against Geo they have standing under the PIP statute because they're supposed to be paid from the PIP policy and you breach the contract by not paying the full reimbursement rate okay so that's a whole that's a whole cottage industry you want to go 50/50 going to Florida well they well the the the Tor reform the Tor Reform Bill erased it it's gone they got they got rid of it they got they got great Pi uh laws there okay yeah so they so they got rid of pip in this this Florida statute and looking at it two years later the florid of legislator is like we still have this huge problem in processing claims and paying but you've pulled this mechanism for rep uh accountability out let's re-evaluate it and let's reinstate it and so now it's back up for debate and and that's a Lobby thing too because all the piters are like we want our jobs back but like that's politics right and that's what's going on here is down in Florida they promised they were going to lower premiums and reduce verdicts they haven't reduced verdicts and they haven't lowered premiums and Florida legislators are like whoa whoa whoa did we get what we bargain for um and that's what we think could happen here in Georgia you know what I don't want to do what's that debate this guy he's really smart he's really good he was really good I just got whiskey Brian Rob love you guys thank you so much it was enlightening and I know my mom's gonna get a lot out this episode and my wife nobody's watching on my side oh actually I do have one thing actually I do you want to say uh so my girlfriend uh comes from a very conservative family and when I when I met her her opinion of personal injury was probably that of many now she works as my office manager and she sees the good that we do and it has been really cool to see like this opinion kind of go from like it's done a 180 but she was she was definitely one of the like the I'm not saying she was Insurance she's a licensed insurance agent but she was like a program to think yeah this is bad and I think that that's what the insurance company's done uh is they've programmed a lot of people to say this is a disingenuous business and these are disingenuous injuries and she has seen that there hey maybe there are some but there are a lot of people that are I mean their lives are upended from this yeah and and that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to just you know get them the justice that they deserve because you can't roll back the hands of time but you can try to get them back to where they were yeah I mean I think that's right Brian is that there is it's it's not a perfect system there's no way to undo something awful right but we're civil society and that's why it's a civil justice system and the only remedy that we have is money and that's why we pay for insurance there's no other reason for them to exist in order for Commerce to happen in a society where stuff can go wrong is for us to buy insurance the whole point of insurance is to pull risk and to reduce the cost of doing business business and being in a condensed populated civilized society and the fact that they actually take our money and they hate us for asking them to give some of it back it's reprehensible but yet their job is to increase profits and so they can't reconcile why they exist with what they have and that is their problem but thankfully we're here to hold them accountable I love that yeah that was good that was really good I I Echo what he just said I did want to say thank you for having me but uh yeah you guys are uh great lawyers and great friends so this has been a treat oh amazing yeah I'm just so glad that you invited me and I'm I'm just hopeful it doesn't pass I wasn't invited but I'm happy to be here love you guys all right guys take care